07-11-12, 6:48 PM
Clannad: After Story
Anime Relations: Clannad: After Story
I have really high hopes for this season. The first season of Clannad I found to be really entertaining and really meaningful. While the series ended on sort of a very positive and concrete note I believe that there's a lot more to come in terms of the plot developing. There were a lot of loose ends left by the last season that I'm looking forward to having tied up now.
I'm also looking forward to figuring out what makes this anime so sad. Well... I suppose "looking forward to" is probably not the correct way of saying that. I'm very apprehensive of it, but I'm definitely enjoying this series and wherever it goes I'll be happy to follow. This anime has impressed me quite a lot, in multiple senses of the word. I know it will continue to do that more than ever in this season.
Part One: Episodes 1-4
Clannad: After Story starts out with a little bit of fun. Akio-san, who's apparently more involved in local baseball than I had previously thought is trying to get together a serious team to compete against the next shopping district over's team. There's only one problem, the opposition features a high-school star player. The team ultimately ends up comprising of the main and a few supporting characters as one would expect. The episode as a whole says "filler" all over it, but it was well done and even though I was looking forward to really getting into the meat of this season I had fun watching it. It got me thinking about my past and about baseball again, much like other anime have. But that's neither here nor there and I've already thought enough about it that I don't care to write about it any more. Basically I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that for years I gave up baseball, which is a sport I really enjoyed. I miss it, and I've started considering the possibility of trying to get involved in it in some way in college next year. It's a bit of a personal struggle and it has nothing much to do with Clannad: After Story.
After the first filler episode Clannad: After Story dove directly into an arc surrounding one of my favorite supporting characters: Sunohara Youhei. Usually nothing more than a fairly interesting comic relief outlet, Sunohara gets put in a new light when his sister comes back to town to help him put his life in order. The interpersonal relationships as well as the lies and deceit that go on are a bit complicated but ultimately the problem focuses on the fact that Mei-chan thinks her older brother has stopped caring for her.
In the end it turns out that Sunohara was just standing aside because he believed that Tomoya was her boyfriend and that he didn't want to risk messing that up. To him, there wouldn't be anyone who he would rather take care of his sister than his great friend. In the end all the kinks are worked out and everyone gains a more or less comprehensive grasp of the situation. Sunohara is really lucky I think, not only to have such a great little sister who cares about him so much, but also to have a friend like Tomoya. I never really had a friend like that, who I would be with through thick and thin, so I never really had any experiences like the ones in these episodes. Sunohara's a great guy as well and he really does care for his friends and family, even though he might be a little bad at showing it. Great character development for him and for Mei-chan as well as perhaps most importantly Tomoya. I really enjoyed this arc.
Sadly, that's probably the last time we'll get to see Sunohara-san in as major a role as we've seen him the last few episodes. I'm sure he'll still be around though making every episode he gets himself involved in a little bit more light-hearted and humorous.
End Part One
Part Two: Episodes 5-6
Today I finally got around to watching a little bit more of Clannad: After Story. It's been a little bit difficult getting to watch as much as I want to, and occasionally I've also been putting off watching in the hopes of getting a superior enjoyment from watching in bulk. Fortunately this arc was fairly short, and I was able to watch it in what little bit of down-time I had today. I wasn't really at home so I couldn't write down all my thoughts but just after watching this I wrote down this summary of what happened:
- Misae-san's cat's story
- As a child Misae-san comforted a sickly child in a hospital
- Later on he had died, but he was very thankful to her for helping him durin a hard time
- When he died, he left his last wish for the girl he had aparently come to love, Misae-san
- The cat took the form of the master, and attempted to deliver the wish to Misae-san
- The cat ends up falling in love with Misae-san as well
- Through events, Misae-san falls in love with him as well
- Her wish is that "he should love her forever and ever
- He evidently had to return to cat form, but continued to love her and live with her
- She remembers him, but never knew about who the cat was until the cat showed Tomoya-kun in a dream. At the end of the episode Tomoya-kun helps her to realize it.
- Very bittersweet ending.
Basically this was a really nice concise arc which delivered a lot of information about a character who we haven't gotten a whole lot of background about, Misae-san, as well as a fair amount of plot development in terms of the supernatural goings on that are still more or less unexplained.
I can feel things starting to pick up in terms of the plot's pace. Tomoya and Nagisa are becoming even more of a couple and their relationship is starting to become a lot more serious. I'm very interested to see where they go from here, and the impact that the characters and goings on around them will have on their relationship, as well as what affect their relationship will have on those around them.
End Part Two
Part Three: Episodes 7-9
I suppose I've been waiting throughout Clannad: After Story for some major shift in the plot, partially because I've been told over and over how sad it is. I have yet to reach anything really sad, so I've been waiting and waiting for the plot to "pick up" and go somewhere else entirely.
Now that I think about it, this is an anime based on a visual novel. I would imagine it would be very difficult to make a recreation of a visual novel in anime form, due to the fact that in any visual novel you have multiple avenues or "routes" which the player can direct the story down. Regardless of how linear or fast paced the plot might be, the anime of any visual novel has to spend a lot of time letting the viewers get acquainted with each and every character to give them a taste of all the different routes. Naturally the writers of the anime need to ultimately choose a single route to follow, but unless they take a good amount of time to at least brush against all the other paths the anime is going to be missing a lot of what the visual novel has to offer.
Due to this nature we have a number of short arcs each focusing on a certain character. The character featured in Episodes 7 and 8 is Yukine Miyazawa, the girl who basically lives in the resource room of the school and takes care of anyone who should happen to venture there. Her story was pretty entertaining as it dealt with the rest of the city outside of the school. The two gangs going to war over territory on either side of the city, the man, her older brother, who led one of the gangs but made it his goal to stop the fighting, the honorable nature of the gang members and their reliance and respect for Yukine; all of this made for a really interesting, if very brief arc. It was pretty sad when it was revealed that her brother had in fact died from the injuries he had sustained while saving one of his fellow comrades, but it made me happy to realize that his death hadn't been in vain: ultimately it was probably thanks to his sacrifice and Miyazawa's that the gangs ended up setting aside their differences and the fighting stopped.
Episode 9 focused on the relationship between Tomoya and Nagisa (finally). Sadly, Nagisa's frail condition comes back to haunt her and she ends up getting sick: just enough to mean that she will have to repeat senior year again. Tomoya stays with her through the whole ordeal, truly demonstrating his love for her. He even goes so far as to contemplate finding a way to repeat the year himself because he can't stand the thought of not being in school with her.
The real revelation came when he realized how childish he was being. I think Nagisa knew all along that he needed to move on in terms of his schooling and go find a job. Thanks to some guidance from her and the wisest teacher I've ever heard of he ends up graduating with Sunohara.
As far as I'm concerned this is a little bit of a cliffhanger. I really can't imagine where he will go from here. Obviously he's in love with Nagisa enough that he has dedicated his life to her, so I'm not worried about anything coming between them, be it time or distance, but I realize that this is going to be very tough on them both and on their relationship.
On to the next!
End Part Three
Part Four: Episodes 10-12
So yeah, remember when I said in the last part about not being sure that the major plot shift was coming? Forget that. Things started moving really really quickly.
Nagisa gets better and starts going back to school. Now Tomoya's freeloading on her parents and really dislikes the position he's in. I can tell you from experience that the way he's feeling is not a good one. It of course helps that Nagisa's parents absolutely adore him, but it's not easy living on someone else's good graces.
Solution, get a job. A good place to start would be the bakery run by the Furukawa's. So he does that for a while and starts earning a little bit of startup money. Meanwhile Nagisa's having a really tough time in school: the drama club has failed again, she's not making friends due to her age, and to top it all off nobody she knows is in her class. I really felt bad for her, partially due to the fact that all the while all this was going on she kept on a happy face and pretended like none of it was bothering her for Tomoya's sake.
Meanwhile Tomoya's moving up in the world... sort of. He gets a job working with Yoshino-san with the electric company. He works hard and it makes his life even more difficult because he has little to no time to spend with Nagisa. I can't really imagine what that must feel like. I've experienced having to work hard every day (probably not as hard as Tomoya-kun), but I've never been so busy that something or someone really important to me got left out of my life. I've certainly been busy enough that friends, etc. have kind of fallen by the wayside, but obviously what he's going through is different: Nagisa is the love of his life. If I were him I would be very hateful towards my job because of that, but he recognizes that it's giving him a chance to be independent and to survive on his own and he's grateful for that and works all that much harder because of it.
I think the part that was the most exciting for me was when Yoshino-san finally got to tell his story. When he left the high-school one of his teachers, Kouko, was the only one to encourage him to pursue music as a career. He did, and was a really big celebrity. He loved what he was doing and for a while he was happy. Sadly, he soon lost sight of what was important wen he was made to visit some of his crippled/sickly/mentally unstable fans as a charity. He started singing for other, more complicated and perhaps meaningful, reasons and as a result his career went downhill. It was when he reached the bottom and came back home and ran into Kouko that he finally realized what he had done: he lost sight of the fact that the only people he had an obligation to sing for was himself and Kouko who had helped him get there.
We always think that doing things for others, regardless of how we do them, is the right thing to do. Just the phrase "doing things for others" has a very giving and righteous feeling to it. But is doing something for others always the right way to go? Where do we, ourselves, factor into the equation? The truth is we do our best work when we're doing it for ourselves, or for a select few very special people around us. If we overextend ourselves and try to save the world when really we're at our best when we focus our attentions on "our" world: ourselves and those we love. It's just something that I'd like to think about a little bit. I have big hopes for my future: I plan to combine my talents in computers and science to make something that could be really useful in many facets of life around the world. It sounds noble, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't interested in accomplishing this to gain my own personal shot at success and happiness. Does that make me a bad person? Or does that make me all that much more likely to succeed? I really don't know. Perhaps its important to maintain a balance between the two in order to get the result that will be beneficial to everyone. Perhaps if Yoshino had kept singing the way he was singing before (for himself) then everyone would have ended up much better off.
Anyways after that Tomoya's father gets arrested for being involved with "something dangerous" and essentially ruins Tomoya's shot at ever being successful in this city. He decides that he has to leave and that he wants to take Nagisa with him. The episode culminates in him asking Nagisa to marry him.
And she says yes!
Things are going to be picking up really quickly from here on out.
End Part Four
Part Five: Episodes 13-16
An absolutely incredible amount of things have happened over the last few episodes. So much so that I really barely even know where to begin.
I had figured for a while that Nagisa and Tomoya would have a baby together. I'd always imagined that the saddest thing that could possibly happen was for them to start a family, only to have it snatched away from them last minute. That's why when people kept telling me how sad Clannad: After Story I was more of less expecting that to happen.
That's probably why I wasn't surprised at any point throughout the last four episodes. I was fairly sure Nagisa would die during or very soon after child-birth, but I kind of didn't expect everything to happen so quickly. It was only four short episodes ago that they got engaged. How have things changed so fast?
I really don't know where the story can go from here. Things came to pass a lot sooner than I had ever imagined so I don't have a clue what's left to tell. It's actually a little bit refreshing. I won't say that the plot was predictable, because it really isn't, but I had figured all the things that have come to pass would. I had guessed for a long time that it would all culminate in the horrifying reality of Nagisa's death...
I'm not sure why it is that anime like this is so enjoyable. What is it about sadness that attracts us? Perhaps we don't live for or enjoy the sadness for the sake of sadness itself, but perhaps we choose to experience the sadness because it gives that much more meaning to the happy times. If anyone asks me if I enjoyed Clannad: After Story I don't think I'll be able to say a simple yes after this. I have enjoyed all the happy times very much: the humor, the joys of life that we so seldom think about being portrayed in a way that forces us to appreciate what we have, it's all made for a wonderful experience so far. I can't say I enjoyed the sadness. I feel like that is contradictory. You can't really enjoy sadness itself, but you can enjoy the light that it casts upon everything else.
Clannad: After Story is beautiful. It's breathtaking and it makes you re-think everything about what you're doing with your life. Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten? What are the odds of you being where you expect yourself to be, where you want to be? What obstacles could interrupt your happiness, what hardship could destroy the joy that you so eagerly seek?
What exactly does it mean to live? And what exactly are you living for?
I don't mean to try and sound philosophical, but these are all questions that are floating around my mind right now thanks to this anime. I don't think I've ever been in love. I've brushed up against it; thought I understood it and was in it. Hell I even once met a girl who I thought I would want to live the rest of my life and start a family with.
But is that what we're here for? Is life really only for life's sake? Do we live to procreate? To find happiness? To take care of and depend on someone else?
For a while before watching Clannad: After Story I thought I stopped caring about those things. I've been living my life without thinking about them at all: focusing only on myself and my future goals as though nobody else would be involved in them. I figured that love was unnecessary and if the fates determined it I would be perfectly fine living my life without it. It might be strange, but this anime has made me rethink my philosophy entirely. What really is the point of living if you don't live for someone else? When we die, what was the use of everything we do if there's nobody left behind to benefit from it? The truth is I don't think I'll be able to live alone my whole life and truly be happy. I might be successful, powerful, rich, but it's all meaningless if you don't have someone to share it with. I don't mean to say that I'm going to be more active in seeking out someone to share my life with from now on. The only thing I can say is that after watching Clannad: After Story I might be able to open my heart a little bit more to the possibility of letting others into my life a little more than I have already and seeing where things go.
Maybe someday I too will be a father. It's something I desire, but not something I wish to seek. Why is that? Truthfully, is it possible to seek something like that? Is love something to be sought after, or something to fall into when you least expect it? I, being somewhat of a romantic am a subscriber to the latter. And with that in mind I intend to keep an open heart and embrace the possibilities and see where life takes me.
Clannad: After Story is by far the most meaningful thing I've experienced in a long time, and I'm only just over half way through.
I'm going to start savoring this anime a little bit more. I've been trying to devour it, taking in as much as I can before life gets in the way of me enjoying it yet again. Now I realize that I need to take some time to think over each episode as I watch. There's a lot to be learned from this, and rushing through it will get me nowhere.
Tomorrow I'll start with the aftermath and result of the birth. I hope that it won't depress me too much but I'm ready for whatever it throws at me.
End Part Five
Part Six: Episodes 17-22
It's been quite a while before anything has truly left me totally speechless. Clannad: After Story easily did that though, time and time again. At times it felt like the sadness wouldn't stop: sad events would just keep piling one on top of another. They did. This anime toys with the viewer's emotions like none other. It lifts you up to the pinnacle of happiness only to drop you down harder than ever crashing down to the depths of despair.
I really don't know what to say right now about the end of Clannad: After Story. A ton of things happened that left me thinking about more things than I can even begin to name. Especially the very ending... when suddenly as the happiness has finally come back into Tomoya's life Ushio is suddenly ripped from his arms and from our hearts. Then suddenly the universe seems to split in half, and everything that we've seen comes crashing down on us all at once. It took me a lot of thinking to figure out the very confusing deus ex machina type ending, and what exactly it means.
When an anime tackles the concept of alternate, yet related universes you can be sure that it's going to get very complicated and hard to follow. When an anime like Clannad: After Story tackles the concept of alternate universes, and combines that with alternate timelines it becomes virtually impossible to follow at a single watching.
After thinking about it though I feel that the end went like this:
When Nagisa first fell ill and her father ran out to that grove where the new hospital was and prayed, Nagisa's fate and perhaps her entire being was somehow linked to the city, a sort of destiny and soul bond. I don't mean this metaphorically either: this is what literally happened. That, by the way, is another reason that Clannad: After Story was really difficult to understand, the lines between reality and metaphor, supernatural and imaginary were very thin and indefinite. At any rate Nagisa continued to fall ill periodically as the very much living city fluctuated and grew. Her connection to the city is represented by the scrap doll and the girl in the universe that had ended; quite literally they were one in the same: they were two representations of the same existence, the same person existing in two different worlds simultaneously. That's why Nagisa remembered that story. When she died giving birth to Ushio that blessing or curse, depending on how you look at it, was passed on to Ushio. When Ushio died, things started to get even more confusing.
When her existence in this world died the existence of Ushio in the other world became aware of the nature of their universe and of her role in everything. Thanks to the way she's tied with the city she's able to alter the course of past events, which is why Tomoya experienced the series of flashbacks and alternate possibilities which made the end so confusing. Finally Tomoya is brought to realize that no matter how sad or miserable the outcome it would always be worth it to have been with Nagisa and ultimately Ushio. The universe is then re-written so that Nagisa never died giving birth to Ushio, and if I had to guess both are freed from being tied into the city.
It's all in all a very happy ending, but somehow I still can't shake the sad feeling. Even though Tomoya, Nagisa and Ushio live happily ever after along with everyone else, I suppose the compounding sadness from the previous episodes made the ending still a really bittersweet one. Clannad: After Story is the conclusion of a classic coming of age story for Tomoya, combined with an extremely beautiful and intricate exploration of the nature of life and living and a really fascinating multiple universe fantasy.
And yet, I can't shake this empty feeling. Naturally there's the usual sadness I feel at the end of a really good anime. Even though there's a couple episodes with alternate routes from the visual novel, but the truth is the story has ended. There's still a bit more content left, but the emotional ride is over... and yet I'm left with a billion things to think about.
I'm going to have to set this one aside for a little while, probably until tomorrow. I have to think about it a lot before I'll be able to continue onto the extras. I'm looking forward to them, but I need to come to terms with everything that happened in the main story of Clannad: After Story before I can go and enjoy anything else.
Just... wow. This feeling I'm left with is pretty hard to describe. Honestly what it feels like is an emptiness in the middle of my chest. I'm not unhappy. Clannad: After Story taught me a lot and made me think about life in a whole new way. If I'll ever be able to say that there was an anime which "changed my life" it would certainly be this. My views on everything: family, happiness, purpose, goals... I have to re-evaluate it all. Where am I going with my life? Who am I doing it for? What do I intend to do in terms of love, would I ever consider having a family of my own? Can a life really have meaning if it's lived solely for ones own sake?
I feel like I've grown a lot from watching this anime. As Tomoya's experiences taught him about what it means to be an adult, be a man, be a father I feel like I learned alongside him. I hope I never have to experience the sadness that he did, but I feel that now more than ever that just like he decided that the happy times were worth all the suffering that all of them endured and decided that given the chance he would choose yet again to meet Nagisa, I too would be open to the possibility of love and of finding happiness through that route. I've always thought that what we do on earth is meaningless if we don't have someone to pass it along to. Now though I think I'm convinced that I have the strength to do it.
Clannad and Clannad: After Story have made for a beautiful experience and a ride that I'll never forget. The unforgettable characters, the beautiful story, the lessons; all of it makes Clannad the most meaningful and the most incredible anime I've ever seen. I doubt any will ever surpass it in that.
Just... amazing. I love this show.
End Part Six
Part Seven: Episodes 22-End
I took most of today to let this series soak in before partaking of the last few episodes, or what I like to think of as being the extras. The episode (I have yet to watch the official OVA extra) featuring a Tomoya x Kyou pairing had little to no effect on me. How could it after experiencing the emotional turmoil of Clannad: After Story?
What I did enjoy and what I think added to the series and confirmed my understanding was the summary. In it Tomoya speaks to Ushio and tells her the whole story, and then relates to the audience alone the memory of Nagisa and her dying. I felt like this really tied things up, and even though they continued to leave Nagisa as really a shadow of a character (they don't even show her face in the very end) it still brought the whole thing full circle a little more satisfactorily than just the ending in the main part of the series.
I absolutely love Clannad: After Story. I'm going to get the VN now because I know that I have to in order to do this fantastic story justice. Absolutely beautiful.
End
I'm also looking forward to figuring out what makes this anime so sad. Well... I suppose "looking forward to" is probably not the correct way of saying that. I'm very apprehensive of it, but I'm definitely enjoying this series and wherever it goes I'll be happy to follow. This anime has impressed me quite a lot, in multiple senses of the word. I know it will continue to do that more than ever in this season.
Part One: Episodes 1-4
Clannad: After Story starts out with a little bit of fun. Akio-san, who's apparently more involved in local baseball than I had previously thought is trying to get together a serious team to compete against the next shopping district over's team. There's only one problem, the opposition features a high-school star player. The team ultimately ends up comprising of the main and a few supporting characters as one would expect. The episode as a whole says "filler" all over it, but it was well done and even though I was looking forward to really getting into the meat of this season I had fun watching it. It got me thinking about my past and about baseball again, much like other anime have. But that's neither here nor there and I've already thought enough about it that I don't care to write about it any more. Basically I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that for years I gave up baseball, which is a sport I really enjoyed. I miss it, and I've started considering the possibility of trying to get involved in it in some way in college next year. It's a bit of a personal struggle and it has nothing much to do with Clannad: After Story.
After the first filler episode Clannad: After Story dove directly into an arc surrounding one of my favorite supporting characters: Sunohara Youhei. Usually nothing more than a fairly interesting comic relief outlet, Sunohara gets put in a new light when his sister comes back to town to help him put his life in order. The interpersonal relationships as well as the lies and deceit that go on are a bit complicated but ultimately the problem focuses on the fact that Mei-chan thinks her older brother has stopped caring for her.
In the end it turns out that Sunohara was just standing aside because he believed that Tomoya was her boyfriend and that he didn't want to risk messing that up. To him, there wouldn't be anyone who he would rather take care of his sister than his great friend. In the end all the kinks are worked out and everyone gains a more or less comprehensive grasp of the situation. Sunohara is really lucky I think, not only to have such a great little sister who cares about him so much, but also to have a friend like Tomoya. I never really had a friend like that, who I would be with through thick and thin, so I never really had any experiences like the ones in these episodes. Sunohara's a great guy as well and he really does care for his friends and family, even though he might be a little bad at showing it. Great character development for him and for Mei-chan as well as perhaps most importantly Tomoya. I really enjoyed this arc.
Sadly, that's probably the last time we'll get to see Sunohara-san in as major a role as we've seen him the last few episodes. I'm sure he'll still be around though making every episode he gets himself involved in a little bit more light-hearted and humorous.
End Part One
Part Two: Episodes 5-6
Today I finally got around to watching a little bit more of Clannad: After Story. It's been a little bit difficult getting to watch as much as I want to, and occasionally I've also been putting off watching in the hopes of getting a superior enjoyment from watching in bulk. Fortunately this arc was fairly short, and I was able to watch it in what little bit of down-time I had today. I wasn't really at home so I couldn't write down all my thoughts but just after watching this I wrote down this summary of what happened:
- Misae-san's cat's story
- As a child Misae-san comforted a sickly child in a hospital
- Later on he had died, but he was very thankful to her for helping him durin a hard time
- When he died, he left his last wish for the girl he had aparently come to love, Misae-san
- The cat took the form of the master, and attempted to deliver the wish to Misae-san
- The cat ends up falling in love with Misae-san as well
- Through events, Misae-san falls in love with him as well
- Her wish is that "he should love her forever and ever
- He evidently had to return to cat form, but continued to love her and live with her
- She remembers him, but never knew about who the cat was until the cat showed Tomoya-kun in a dream. At the end of the episode Tomoya-kun helps her to realize it.
- Very bittersweet ending.
Basically this was a really nice concise arc which delivered a lot of information about a character who we haven't gotten a whole lot of background about, Misae-san, as well as a fair amount of plot development in terms of the supernatural goings on that are still more or less unexplained.
I can feel things starting to pick up in terms of the plot's pace. Tomoya and Nagisa are becoming even more of a couple and their relationship is starting to become a lot more serious. I'm very interested to see where they go from here, and the impact that the characters and goings on around them will have on their relationship, as well as what affect their relationship will have on those around them.
End Part Two
Part Three: Episodes 7-9
I suppose I've been waiting throughout Clannad: After Story for some major shift in the plot, partially because I've been told over and over how sad it is. I have yet to reach anything really sad, so I've been waiting and waiting for the plot to "pick up" and go somewhere else entirely.
Now that I think about it, this is an anime based on a visual novel. I would imagine it would be very difficult to make a recreation of a visual novel in anime form, due to the fact that in any visual novel you have multiple avenues or "routes" which the player can direct the story down. Regardless of how linear or fast paced the plot might be, the anime of any visual novel has to spend a lot of time letting the viewers get acquainted with each and every character to give them a taste of all the different routes. Naturally the writers of the anime need to ultimately choose a single route to follow, but unless they take a good amount of time to at least brush against all the other paths the anime is going to be missing a lot of what the visual novel has to offer.
Due to this nature we have a number of short arcs each focusing on a certain character. The character featured in Episodes 7 and 8 is Yukine Miyazawa, the girl who basically lives in the resource room of the school and takes care of anyone who should happen to venture there. Her story was pretty entertaining as it dealt with the rest of the city outside of the school. The two gangs going to war over territory on either side of the city, the man, her older brother, who led one of the gangs but made it his goal to stop the fighting, the honorable nature of the gang members and their reliance and respect for Yukine; all of this made for a really interesting, if very brief arc. It was pretty sad when it was revealed that her brother had in fact died from the injuries he had sustained while saving one of his fellow comrades, but it made me happy to realize that his death hadn't been in vain: ultimately it was probably thanks to his sacrifice and Miyazawa's that the gangs ended up setting aside their differences and the fighting stopped.
Episode 9 focused on the relationship between Tomoya and Nagisa (finally). Sadly, Nagisa's frail condition comes back to haunt her and she ends up getting sick: just enough to mean that she will have to repeat senior year again. Tomoya stays with her through the whole ordeal, truly demonstrating his love for her. He even goes so far as to contemplate finding a way to repeat the year himself because he can't stand the thought of not being in school with her.
The real revelation came when he realized how childish he was being. I think Nagisa knew all along that he needed to move on in terms of his schooling and go find a job. Thanks to some guidance from her and the wisest teacher I've ever heard of he ends up graduating with Sunohara.
As far as I'm concerned this is a little bit of a cliffhanger. I really can't imagine where he will go from here. Obviously he's in love with Nagisa enough that he has dedicated his life to her, so I'm not worried about anything coming between them, be it time or distance, but I realize that this is going to be very tough on them both and on their relationship.
On to the next!
End Part Three
Part Four: Episodes 10-12
So yeah, remember when I said in the last part about not being sure that the major plot shift was coming? Forget that. Things started moving really really quickly.
Nagisa gets better and starts going back to school. Now Tomoya's freeloading on her parents and really dislikes the position he's in. I can tell you from experience that the way he's feeling is not a good one. It of course helps that Nagisa's parents absolutely adore him, but it's not easy living on someone else's good graces.
Solution, get a job. A good place to start would be the bakery run by the Furukawa's. So he does that for a while and starts earning a little bit of startup money. Meanwhile Nagisa's having a really tough time in school: the drama club has failed again, she's not making friends due to her age, and to top it all off nobody she knows is in her class. I really felt bad for her, partially due to the fact that all the while all this was going on she kept on a happy face and pretended like none of it was bothering her for Tomoya's sake.
Meanwhile Tomoya's moving up in the world... sort of. He gets a job working with Yoshino-san with the electric company. He works hard and it makes his life even more difficult because he has little to no time to spend with Nagisa. I can't really imagine what that must feel like. I've experienced having to work hard every day (probably not as hard as Tomoya-kun), but I've never been so busy that something or someone really important to me got left out of my life. I've certainly been busy enough that friends, etc. have kind of fallen by the wayside, but obviously what he's going through is different: Nagisa is the love of his life. If I were him I would be very hateful towards my job because of that, but he recognizes that it's giving him a chance to be independent and to survive on his own and he's grateful for that and works all that much harder because of it.
I think the part that was the most exciting for me was when Yoshino-san finally got to tell his story. When he left the high-school one of his teachers, Kouko, was the only one to encourage him to pursue music as a career. He did, and was a really big celebrity. He loved what he was doing and for a while he was happy. Sadly, he soon lost sight of what was important wen he was made to visit some of his crippled/sickly/mentally unstable fans as a charity. He started singing for other, more complicated and perhaps meaningful, reasons and as a result his career went downhill. It was when he reached the bottom and came back home and ran into Kouko that he finally realized what he had done: he lost sight of the fact that the only people he had an obligation to sing for was himself and Kouko who had helped him get there.
We always think that doing things for others, regardless of how we do them, is the right thing to do. Just the phrase "doing things for others" has a very giving and righteous feeling to it. But is doing something for others always the right way to go? Where do we, ourselves, factor into the equation? The truth is we do our best work when we're doing it for ourselves, or for a select few very special people around us. If we overextend ourselves and try to save the world when really we're at our best when we focus our attentions on "our" world: ourselves and those we love. It's just something that I'd like to think about a little bit. I have big hopes for my future: I plan to combine my talents in computers and science to make something that could be really useful in many facets of life around the world. It sounds noble, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't interested in accomplishing this to gain my own personal shot at success and happiness. Does that make me a bad person? Or does that make me all that much more likely to succeed? I really don't know. Perhaps its important to maintain a balance between the two in order to get the result that will be beneficial to everyone. Perhaps if Yoshino had kept singing the way he was singing before (for himself) then everyone would have ended up much better off.
Anyways after that Tomoya's father gets arrested for being involved with "something dangerous" and essentially ruins Tomoya's shot at ever being successful in this city. He decides that he has to leave and that he wants to take Nagisa with him. The episode culminates in him asking Nagisa to marry him.
And she says yes!
Things are going to be picking up really quickly from here on out.
End Part Four
Part Five: Episodes 13-16
An absolutely incredible amount of things have happened over the last few episodes. So much so that I really barely even know where to begin.
I had figured for a while that Nagisa and Tomoya would have a baby together. I'd always imagined that the saddest thing that could possibly happen was for them to start a family, only to have it snatched away from them last minute. That's why when people kept telling me how sad Clannad: After Story I was more of less expecting that to happen.
That's probably why I wasn't surprised at any point throughout the last four episodes. I was fairly sure Nagisa would die during or very soon after child-birth, but I kind of didn't expect everything to happen so quickly. It was only four short episodes ago that they got engaged. How have things changed so fast?
I really don't know where the story can go from here. Things came to pass a lot sooner than I had ever imagined so I don't have a clue what's left to tell. It's actually a little bit refreshing. I won't say that the plot was predictable, because it really isn't, but I had figured all the things that have come to pass would. I had guessed for a long time that it would all culminate in the horrifying reality of Nagisa's death...
I'm not sure why it is that anime like this is so enjoyable. What is it about sadness that attracts us? Perhaps we don't live for or enjoy the sadness for the sake of sadness itself, but perhaps we choose to experience the sadness because it gives that much more meaning to the happy times. If anyone asks me if I enjoyed Clannad: After Story I don't think I'll be able to say a simple yes after this. I have enjoyed all the happy times very much: the humor, the joys of life that we so seldom think about being portrayed in a way that forces us to appreciate what we have, it's all made for a wonderful experience so far. I can't say I enjoyed the sadness. I feel like that is contradictory. You can't really enjoy sadness itself, but you can enjoy the light that it casts upon everything else.
Clannad: After Story is beautiful. It's breathtaking and it makes you re-think everything about what you're doing with your life. Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten? What are the odds of you being where you expect yourself to be, where you want to be? What obstacles could interrupt your happiness, what hardship could destroy the joy that you so eagerly seek?
What exactly does it mean to live? And what exactly are you living for?
I don't mean to try and sound philosophical, but these are all questions that are floating around my mind right now thanks to this anime. I don't think I've ever been in love. I've brushed up against it; thought I understood it and was in it. Hell I even once met a girl who I thought I would want to live the rest of my life and start a family with.
But is that what we're here for? Is life really only for life's sake? Do we live to procreate? To find happiness? To take care of and depend on someone else?
For a while before watching Clannad: After Story I thought I stopped caring about those things. I've been living my life without thinking about them at all: focusing only on myself and my future goals as though nobody else would be involved in them. I figured that love was unnecessary and if the fates determined it I would be perfectly fine living my life without it. It might be strange, but this anime has made me rethink my philosophy entirely. What really is the point of living if you don't live for someone else? When we die, what was the use of everything we do if there's nobody left behind to benefit from it? The truth is I don't think I'll be able to live alone my whole life and truly be happy. I might be successful, powerful, rich, but it's all meaningless if you don't have someone to share it with. I don't mean to say that I'm going to be more active in seeking out someone to share my life with from now on. The only thing I can say is that after watching Clannad: After Story I might be able to open my heart a little bit more to the possibility of letting others into my life a little more than I have already and seeing where things go.
Maybe someday I too will be a father. It's something I desire, but not something I wish to seek. Why is that? Truthfully, is it possible to seek something like that? Is love something to be sought after, or something to fall into when you least expect it? I, being somewhat of a romantic am a subscriber to the latter. And with that in mind I intend to keep an open heart and embrace the possibilities and see where life takes me.
Clannad: After Story is by far the most meaningful thing I've experienced in a long time, and I'm only just over half way through.
I'm going to start savoring this anime a little bit more. I've been trying to devour it, taking in as much as I can before life gets in the way of me enjoying it yet again. Now I realize that I need to take some time to think over each episode as I watch. There's a lot to be learned from this, and rushing through it will get me nowhere.
Tomorrow I'll start with the aftermath and result of the birth. I hope that it won't depress me too much but I'm ready for whatever it throws at me.
End Part Five
Part Six: Episodes 17-22
It's been quite a while before anything has truly left me totally speechless. Clannad: After Story easily did that though, time and time again. At times it felt like the sadness wouldn't stop: sad events would just keep piling one on top of another. They did. This anime toys with the viewer's emotions like none other. It lifts you up to the pinnacle of happiness only to drop you down harder than ever crashing down to the depths of despair.
I really don't know what to say right now about the end of Clannad: After Story. A ton of things happened that left me thinking about more things than I can even begin to name. Especially the very ending... when suddenly as the happiness has finally come back into Tomoya's life Ushio is suddenly ripped from his arms and from our hearts. Then suddenly the universe seems to split in half, and everything that we've seen comes crashing down on us all at once. It took me a lot of thinking to figure out the very confusing deus ex machina type ending, and what exactly it means.
When an anime tackles the concept of alternate, yet related universes you can be sure that it's going to get very complicated and hard to follow. When an anime like Clannad: After Story tackles the concept of alternate universes, and combines that with alternate timelines it becomes virtually impossible to follow at a single watching.
After thinking about it though I feel that the end went like this:
When Nagisa first fell ill and her father ran out to that grove where the new hospital was and prayed, Nagisa's fate and perhaps her entire being was somehow linked to the city, a sort of destiny and soul bond. I don't mean this metaphorically either: this is what literally happened. That, by the way, is another reason that Clannad: After Story was really difficult to understand, the lines between reality and metaphor, supernatural and imaginary were very thin and indefinite. At any rate Nagisa continued to fall ill periodically as the very much living city fluctuated and grew. Her connection to the city is represented by the scrap doll and the girl in the universe that had ended; quite literally they were one in the same: they were two representations of the same existence, the same person existing in two different worlds simultaneously. That's why Nagisa remembered that story. When she died giving birth to Ushio that blessing or curse, depending on how you look at it, was passed on to Ushio. When Ushio died, things started to get even more confusing.
When her existence in this world died the existence of Ushio in the other world became aware of the nature of their universe and of her role in everything. Thanks to the way she's tied with the city she's able to alter the course of past events, which is why Tomoya experienced the series of flashbacks and alternate possibilities which made the end so confusing. Finally Tomoya is brought to realize that no matter how sad or miserable the outcome it would always be worth it to have been with Nagisa and ultimately Ushio. The universe is then re-written so that Nagisa never died giving birth to Ushio, and if I had to guess both are freed from being tied into the city.
It's all in all a very happy ending, but somehow I still can't shake the sad feeling. Even though Tomoya, Nagisa and Ushio live happily ever after along with everyone else, I suppose the compounding sadness from the previous episodes made the ending still a really bittersweet one. Clannad: After Story is the conclusion of a classic coming of age story for Tomoya, combined with an extremely beautiful and intricate exploration of the nature of life and living and a really fascinating multiple universe fantasy.
And yet, I can't shake this empty feeling. Naturally there's the usual sadness I feel at the end of a really good anime. Even though there's a couple episodes with alternate routes from the visual novel, but the truth is the story has ended. There's still a bit more content left, but the emotional ride is over... and yet I'm left with a billion things to think about.
I'm going to have to set this one aside for a little while, probably until tomorrow. I have to think about it a lot before I'll be able to continue onto the extras. I'm looking forward to them, but I need to come to terms with everything that happened in the main story of Clannad: After Story before I can go and enjoy anything else.
Just... wow. This feeling I'm left with is pretty hard to describe. Honestly what it feels like is an emptiness in the middle of my chest. I'm not unhappy. Clannad: After Story taught me a lot and made me think about life in a whole new way. If I'll ever be able to say that there was an anime which "changed my life" it would certainly be this. My views on everything: family, happiness, purpose, goals... I have to re-evaluate it all. Where am I going with my life? Who am I doing it for? What do I intend to do in terms of love, would I ever consider having a family of my own? Can a life really have meaning if it's lived solely for ones own sake?
I feel like I've grown a lot from watching this anime. As Tomoya's experiences taught him about what it means to be an adult, be a man, be a father I feel like I learned alongside him. I hope I never have to experience the sadness that he did, but I feel that now more than ever that just like he decided that the happy times were worth all the suffering that all of them endured and decided that given the chance he would choose yet again to meet Nagisa, I too would be open to the possibility of love and of finding happiness through that route. I've always thought that what we do on earth is meaningless if we don't have someone to pass it along to. Now though I think I'm convinced that I have the strength to do it.
Clannad and Clannad: After Story have made for a beautiful experience and a ride that I'll never forget. The unforgettable characters, the beautiful story, the lessons; all of it makes Clannad the most meaningful and the most incredible anime I've ever seen. I doubt any will ever surpass it in that.
Just... amazing. I love this show.
End Part Six
Part Seven: Episodes 22-End
I took most of today to let this series soak in before partaking of the last few episodes, or what I like to think of as being the extras. The episode (I have yet to watch the official OVA extra) featuring a Tomoya x Kyou pairing had little to no effect on me. How could it after experiencing the emotional turmoil of Clannad: After Story?
What I did enjoy and what I think added to the series and confirmed my understanding was the summary. In it Tomoya speaks to Ushio and tells her the whole story, and then relates to the audience alone the memory of Nagisa and her dying. I felt like this really tied things up, and even though they continued to leave Nagisa as really a shadow of a character (they don't even show her face in the very end) it still brought the whole thing full circle a little more satisfactorily than just the ending in the main part of the series.
I absolutely love Clannad: After Story. I'm going to get the VN now because I know that I have to in order to do this fantastic story justice. Absolutely beautiful.
End
Posted by svastiKaThulhu | 07-11-12, 6:48 PM | Add a comment